


Is Anybody Out There

by noblydonedonnanoble



Series: It's Only Natural [1]
Category: Doctor Who RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-18
Updated: 2012-05-20
Packaged: 2017-11-05 13:43:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/407092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblydonedonnanoble/pseuds/noblydonedonnanoble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He noticed her because she was sitting in a corner booth all alone drinking rum and Coke—without the rum.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

            It started in a bar. It’s really fairly mind-boggling, how many things in life start in bars. But few of them have been quite as important.

            He noticed her because she was sitting in a corner booth all alone drinking rum and Coke—without the rum. He figured she must have been around 25. And so seeing her, sitting in a dim bar and surrounded by drunks trying to drown their sorrows, he couldn’t help but be intrigued.

            But he was just sitting at the bar, and awkward and gangling university student and he didn’t really know if she would react positively to him just coming over.

            Finally, he picked up his beer and just did it, sliding into the seat across from her. She hardly reacted to his presence.

            “I hear tell that in order to get drunk, having some alcohol in your drink sorta helps.” The words fell out of his mouth with little real thought applied to them, but when what he said actually registered he felt pleased with himself. For once, he sounded fairly clever.

            She looked at him. He could see that she was amused, but really did not want to show it. “You don’t say,” was all she said in response.

            “I do say. Perhaps I could buy you a beer, help you in that direction? Sitting in this corner all by yourself, my guess is that _is_ what you want.”

            Perhaps it was the alcohol that was making him feel so confident. Under normal circumstances, he would never have approached this woman. Because she _was_ a woman, clearly not a girl. Sitting across from her, he felt more like a boy than he had in quite some time.

            And then this woman shook her head. “No thank you sweetie, I don’t drink.”

            “You’re sitting in a bar, and you don’t drink.”

            She smiled a little at the bemused expression on his face. “I like living my life out of a fog.”

            He smiled back. He couldn’t help it. “So why are you here, then?”

            “Well, people come here when they’re depressed. And most people drink, but for me that’s out of the question. I just thought maybe this would be a good place to wallow in self-pity for a while. Plus,” She held up her glass. “I was really craving a Coke.”

            “How’s that working out for you? The wallowing in self-pity part, not the Coke part. Though you definitely seem to be enjoying your Coke.”

            She didn’t answer for a minute; instead she just looked him up and down. He knew what she was wondering—who he was, and what his secret motivation was for asking these questions. Something that she saw must have convinced her that he wasn’t worth worrying about. “Not very well, honestly. Because a really nice man just came over and started making me smile and smiling makes it hard to wallow.”

            He blushed a little at that, and was relieved that bars are habitually kept dark because he did not want her to see him blushing. He took a swig of his beer for something to do. “What are you wallowing over, exactly? Break-up? Lost job?”

            “No, neither… I’ve just not gotten a call-back for any auditions I’ve done in the past three months and it’s started to get to me.”

            An actress! He was an actor, becoming acquainted with an actress. An actress who seemed like she might actually be interested in him. “I get it.”

            “Are you sure?” She looked so skeptical. He wondered why. He wondered what people in her life had told her they understood, only to disappoint her. He wondered if she trusted him when she first looked at him or if she trusted him at that moment.

            But he couldn’t exactly ask a woman any of that if he just sat down at her table two minutes before.

            So he shoved those thoughts to the back of his mind for later—if there was a later—and said, “Yeah. I’m finishing up school this year to become an actor myself.”

             “I can see you acting.” She smiled at him. “You seem like you’d be very charismatic.”

            “Oh, I’m wildly charismatic, can’t you tell?”

            They sat for a few moments, just watching each other with grins on their faces. She sipped her Coke, and he took another gulp of his beer. His view of everything was beginning to become foggy, and after a moment of thought he put the bottle down and pushed it away. Her eyes followed closely as he pushed it to the edge for a waitress to pick up, but she said nothing.

            “You’re making it very hard for me to feel bad about myself.” She said finally.

            He raised his eyebrows. “Is that really such a bad thing?”

            “It’s not what I expected.”

            “And is that okay?”

            She leaned forward on her elbows and looked him in the eye. “Yeah, I think so.”

            He looked at her, the beautiful, young, struggling actress who refused to drink her pain away because she wanted to _see life_ , not suppress it.

            He was pretty sure he was in love.

            “I’m glad. To, y’know, be part of you feeling good about yourself.”

            In his mind, they’d have been kissing by then if it weren’t for the table between them.


	2. Chapter 2

            In her mind, they’d have been kissing by then _despite_ the table, except that he was awkward, and she knew that kissing awkward people always had to be done delicately at first, and strategically.

            She also didn’t trust herself.

            Because if she started kissing him, she would probably sleep with him.

            But if she slept with him, tonight, on her first night ever meeting him, she would have to run away. And of anyone she’d ever met, he was probably the person she least wanted to run away from and she knew absolutely nothing about him at the moment except that he was still in school and wanted to become an actor.

            The fact that she knew so little only made it easier to consider running.

            She wanted to know more about him, though. As he sat there across from her, a wide grin on his face, she couldn’t imagine standing up that second and having him bring her to his flat—because in the past, she’d have done so by that point.

            And honestly, she was intrigued by the fact that he’d put his beer aside.

            “You know, you never did tell me what you were doing sitting in a bar all alone,” she said after a moment.

            He leaned forward on his elbows and looked at her very seriously. “Well, the truth is that I was hanging around looking for a young woman who _doesn’t_ drink so that I could talk her into coming home with me and murder her.”

            She laughed, and noticed the relief on his face when he saw that she genuinely found his joke funny. “But in all seriousness?”

            “One of my friends was trying to set me up on a date, actually. The girl was…” He glanced down at his watch. “Forty-five minutes late when I came over here.”

            Even if she would have been offended by the idea that he came over to her after being stood up—which she wouldn’t have been—his expression made her think that on some level, he thought it sounded fairly bad and if he hadn’t been drunk he wouldn’t have said it.

            She regarded him carefully, not responding. He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “I’m happy that I was able to come over here, though. I’m really not just saying that because of what I just said. Although that did motivate me to actually go through with it. But I… I like you.”

            “I like you too.” She smiled. “I can’t remember the last time...” The last time what? The last time she laughed so easily? The last time someone looked at her like she was the most interesting person in the world? The last time she wanted to shag a man and actually see him the next day? “I like you too.”

            He didn’t push her to finish the sentence, and that just made her like him more.

            “Do you think it’s worth it?” he said suddenly.

            “What?”

            “Acting. You go to school and devote your life to something you know from the beginning is kind of a long shot, but that doesn’t make it any less devastating to be rejected repeatedly. Is it worth it?”

            For a few moments, she examined his expression. She tried to see what his opinion was on the matter, and what he was looking to hear from her. But she couldn’t tell. Under normal circumstances, she probably would have given a bull shit answer that would please everybody. She didn’t want to give him a bull shit answer. “For a lot of people, I don’t think it is. We love it and hopefully we’re good at it, too, and we just have to live under the assumption that we’ll be good _enough_. Sometimes people who deserve to be a lead in every musical end up performing in clubs forever, and sometimes people who don’t deserve to be known end up starring in some television show and we’ll spend forever wondering _why_. And you wanna know what? I could easily tell you right now to just quit, without ever having seen you _perform_ because chances are you won’t make it big and I won’t make it big. But I have a question for you.”

            “What?” It came out as a whisper, like he was scared that if he spoke it would ruin something about the moment.

            “Would it matter? If I told you to quit, would you _actually_ quit?”

            “Never.”

            “Exactly. It’s not because you just met me or because I can’t have an actual opinion. Nobody would be able to convince you. It doesn’t matter how completely un-worth it this future is because we love it too much. So is it worth it? Of course not. Do I care? No. Should _you_ care? Hell no.”

            He beamed at her. “That… That was beautiful. You’re beautiful.”

            The statement was corny, but she had always liked corny and she grinned back at him.

            She really did like him. So much that she could even imagine waking up next to him and smiling. She could imagine going out with him tomorrow night and the night after. She could imagine telling him about her auditions and hearing about his.

            Maybe she could do it.

            “Do you want to go somewhere?” she said softly.

            He did, she could tell. His eyes were enough to tell her so. But he frowned slightly. “Are you sure?”

            “Yes. You know I can’t be saying it because I’m pissed, so don’t you think I’m sure?” She sounded more sure than she felt.

            But he smiled and they left together. She signaled the cab and he gave the cabbie the address of his flat and for the entirety of their ride they kept glancing at one another and smiling whenever they happened to take peeks at each other at the same time.

            As he led her upstairs, she took hold of his hand.

            Neither of them were lost in a fog that night.

            Before drifting off to sleep, he peered at her from heavy-lidded eyes. “You never did tell me your name.”

             “Catherine.”

            “David.”

            With a small laugh, she reached up her hand and brushed his hair out of his eyes. “Nice to meet you.”

            She woke up early that morning. Her eyes landed on him and she almost nudged him, almost woke him up and suggested that they go out to some restaurant to eat breakfast.

            But she didn’t.

            When he finally woke up, she was long gone.


End file.
